World Parkinson's Day

James Parkinson was an 18th century English surgeon, apothecary, geologist and palaentologist and political activist. He was born in April 11, 1755 in the town of Hoxton just north of London. Not long after he got his medical degree, his father, also a doctor, died unexpectedly, and James took over his practice. He worked as a practicing physician all his life. In his own time, Parkinson was well-known not only for his pioneering work on the disease, but also best known for disseminating medical information and for his geological work. 

He is best known for his 1817 work An Essay on the Shaking Palsy, in which he was the first to describe "paralysis agitans", a conditions that would be later renamed Parkinson's Disease by Jan-Martin Charcot some 60 years later. Parkinson was the first person to systematically recognize and describe six individuals with symptoms of the disease that bears his name. In An Essay on the Shaking Palsy (1817), he reported on three of his own patients and three persons whom he saw in the street. He referred to the disease that would later bear his name as paralysis agitans, or shaking palsy. 

 He distinguished between resting tremors and the tremors with motion. Parkinson erroneously suggested that the tremors in these patients were due to lesions in the cervical spinal cord. On April 11, the World Parkinson's Day, we honor Parkinson in celebrating him, his tireless work and invetions. In the whole month of April, we aim to raise awareness of the disease worldwide. A red tulip has also been the symbol of Parkinson's disease for more than 20 years.